Fetal-Adult Cardiac Transcriptome Analysis in Rats with Contrasting Left Ventricular Mass Reveals New Candidates for Cardiac Hypertrophy

ABSTRACT: Reactivation of fetal gene expression patterns has been demonstrated to play a crucial role in common cardiac diseases in adult life including left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy (LVH). Thus, increased wall stress and neurohumoral activation are discussed to induce the return to expression of fetal genes after birth in LVH. We therefore aimed to test whether fetal gene expression programs are linked to the genetic predisposition to LVH. We performed genome-wide gene expression analysis by microarray-technology in a genetic rat model of LVH, i.e. the stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHRSP), to identify differences in expression patterns between day 20 of development (E20) and week 14 in comparison to a normotensive rat strain with low LV mass, i.e. Fischer (F344). 15232 probes from LV RNA from rats at week 14 and at E20 were detected as expressed (p < 0.05) and screened for differential expression. We identified 24 genes with a SHRSP specific up-regulation and 21 genes up-regulated in F344. Further bioinformatic analysis presented Efcab6, Ephx2 and Kcne1 as candidate genes for LVH that showed only in the hypertensive SHRSP rat a differential expression pattern during development and were significantly differentially expressed in adult SHRSP rats compared with two F344 and normotensive Wistar-Kyoto rats. They represent thus interesting novel targets for further functional analyses and the elucidation of mechanisms leading to LVH. Here we report a new approach to identify candidate genes for cardiac hypertrophy by analysing both gene expression differences between strains with contrasting cardiac phenotype and additionally the gene expression program during development.

ORGANISM(S): Rattus norvegicus

PROVIDER: GSE53512 | GEO | 2014/07/01

SECONDARY ACCESSION(S): PRJNA232301

REPOSITORIES: GEO